Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 65: A Mother’s rage

Chapter 65: A Mother’s rage

For Thutmose, it happened in the span of a breath.

One moment, he was preparing for the battle of his life.

His knees had bent slightly, khopesh angled in a reverse grip. His aura curled tighter around him like a coiled serpent, ready to strike. Every nerve had been primed, every scenario played out in his mind. He had felt it—this would be the moment he’d have to play all his cards. No holding back. No room for mistakes.

And then—

Mankhaura collapsed.

Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, he crumpled—bloodied, twitching, and then still.

His body struck the shattered arena floor with a dull, bone-heavy thud that should have echoed louder than it did. The vortex of corrupted power that had once raged around him faltered, sputtered, and finally fizzled out like a dying storm, scattering glowing embers into the wind. They shimmered briefly, then vanished, leaving only the stench of ozone and burnt flesh behind.

Thutmose didn’t move.

He stood motionless, the tip of his blade still low, as if waiting for the fallen prince to stir again—to spring some final trick, some desperate lunge. For a moment, it almost seemed possible. But nothing came.

No pulse of aura. No whispered curse. No breath. Just blood—and silence thick as ash.

Slowly, Thutmose straightened, the iron tension in his frame dissolving like mist beneath the sun. He exhaled softly through his nose, eyes narrowing—not in triumph, but in understanding. Cold. Final.

He didn’t even last five minutes.

There was no satisfaction in the victory only confirmation.

The power had never been his to wield.

---

A flash of movement shattered the quiet.

From the viewing platform above, a streak of golden fabric and burning wind tore through the air like thunderclaps.

Lady Nandi.

She didn’t wait for protocols. She didn’t call for healers. Didn’t scream.

She moved.

Faster than any elder could stop her.

Faster than any enchantment could redirect.

She struck the barrier with the full force of her fury—a glowing palm wrapped in turquoise fire crashing against the iridescent dome.

The arena quaked with the impact. Runes along the dome flared in warning, the protective construct flinching but refusing to yield.

Her eyes widened—not in surprise, but fury.

"Let me through—damn it, let me THROUGH!" she snarled, mana erupting around her in blinding arcs of emerald and bronze.

But the barrier did not move

It had been designed with a single directive: allow exit only when the battle concluded.

And Mankhaura... was no longer fighting.

A sudden pulse surged through the runes, and the dome flickered—then vanished.

Lady Nandi was inside before the final threads of light faded, her form cutting through the settling dust like a blade.

She moved with such grace and terrifying speed that the spectators’ silence shattered into murmurs of awe and fear.

This... this was why Khepri married her.

Not just for beauty. Not for alliance.

But because power like hers demanded acknowledgment.

She reached Mankhaura’s side in the blink of an eye and dropped to her knees.

"Mankhaura!" she whispered—sharp, desperate.

Her hands hovered over him, shaking, then touched his neck wrist, and chest.

Her breath caught.

No pulse.

No rise of his chest.

No flutter of an eyelid.

Her fingers moved faster, searching, pleading. Mana rippled from her palms into his body, probing deeper, trying to jolt something—anything—back into motion.

Nothing

The world tilted.

Her face crumpled.

The tears didn’t come yet—her body was too shocked and her heart was still grasping for denial.

But her lips moved again, with barely a breath behind the words.

"No... no, baby, not like this..."

Her hands trembled as she leaned over him, brushing blood-matted hair from his forehead.

A mother’s touch.

A warrior’s helplessness.

She pressed her forehead against his and whispered through clenched teeth

"Why didn’t you come to me before you went ahead with this misguided plan?"

"WHY"

---

Lady Nandi held her son’s lifeless body in her arms, his blood soaking into the fine threads of her ceremonial robes, turning royal silk into mourning cloth. The deep reds spread like creeping vines, blooming across gold and indigo embroidery—an unholy coronation of loss.

She didn’t weep.

Not yet.

Her eyes, rimmed with kohl, stared ahead unblinking, caught somewhere between the present and the abyss. Her face—once a portrait of regal composure, revered in a dozen provinces—had twisted into something older than grief—something primal. Her lips trembled, not with sorrow but with the instinctive rage of a mother made witness to the unnatural.

The wind shifted, tugging at the hem of her robes, but she did not flinch. Not when Mankhaura fell. Not now, with his head resting against her breast like a child’s, cold and still. There was a stillness in her—a silence that threatened to erupt into something cataclysmic.

No words.

No prayers.

Only the awful weight of finality in her arms.

And then her gaze lifted.

Her ice-blue eyes met his across the shattered arena, through the storm’s settling dust and still-humming echoes .

Thutmose.

Calm. Composed. Standing in silence, his khopesh still at his side, his expression unreadable.

As if this had all gone just as he’d expected.

As if Mankhaura’s collapse... meant nothing.

Rage flared in her chest, blinding and immediate. The world fell away until only that one point of focus remained—him.

And Thutmose was caught off guard for a split second—just a sliver of time.

Not by her fury.

But because this wasn’t how it was supposed to unfold.

The messages had warned him that Mankhaura would grow unstable... that his body would suffer backlash... but not this soon.

Not this violently.

Not like this.

He kept his face neutral, but behind the stillness, gears turned sharply. He had misjudged something. The pill’s power? The calibration of the domain? Or was the source of that mana even darker than anyone had dared to imagine?

Still, he didn’t flinch.

Didn’t move.

Until she screamed.

"YOU KILLED MY SON!!"

He already knew that she would try to put all the blame on him

Her voice cracked across the arena like thunder—ragged, broken, and laced with hate.

"I WON’T LET YOU WALK OUT OF HERE ALIVE!!"

A blur.

That’s all she became.

One moment, she was kneeling beside Mankhaura’s body. The next—air cracked apart as her form streaked toward Thutmose, faster than most eyes could follow.

He had been ready for her fury. He had already activated his shield. Already adjusted his stance.

But her speed defied calculation.

Shewasfasterthanhe realized, just a second too late.

Her hand, cloaked in jagged, spiraling light-blue aura—pure ice energy sharpened into claws—sliced through the space where his face had been a heartbeat before.

He twisted, barely dodging, the edge of her aura grazing his shoulder. Ice crystals bloomed along his pauldron, a line of frozen steel splintering down the metal.

If I hadn’t moved...

His eyes narrowed. He dropped into a full defensive stance, shield raised, weapon reversed.

Internally, his body protested. His domain had strained him—pushed further than he’d intended. Mana’s fatigue gnawed at his core, slowing his reflexes by milliseconds.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

Lady Nandi pivoted mid-lunge, ice gathering at her heels as she prepared to launch another strike.

But—

"STOP THIS MADNESS!"

The elders intervened.

Six Grandmasters descended from the stands in blurs of color and fury, slamming between them in synchronized formation. Their combined auras exploded outward, forming a shimmering wall of pressure between Thutmose and Nandi.

Another stepped forward, his voice cutting through the chaos with authority aged in centuries.

"Lady Nandi," he growled, "stand down."

She didn’t listen.

She took another step forward, claws raised again, her breath hitching in fury.

The eldest among them—his beard trailing like mist, his Domain thick with the weight of time—spoke with thunderous finality:

"Your son... broke the sacred rites."

Nandi froze. Just slightly.

The elder’s voice remained calm but cold.

"He used a forbidden pill by our laws. Power that did not belong to him. And we all saw what happened."

He gestured toward the bloodstained earth.

"He collapsed without Thutmose even taking a single step."

Nandi’s lip curled. "He was forced to. He knew he couldn’t win otherwise. Thutmose cornered him!"

Another elder stepped forward, more softly now.

"We do not deny your pain. But your son made his choice. And his body... could not bear the burden."

"And if you still choose to attack," the eldest warned, "then we will have no choice but to restrain you and hold you until the Patrician returns."

A heavy silence followed.

Lady Nandi’s chest heaved. The ice cracked beneath her feet. Her fists trembled with unreleased devastation.

She looked past them. To Thutmose.

Still calm. I’m still watching, not gloating—just... watching.

It made her want to scream.

But her eyes dropped.

To the boy in her arms.

To the blood smeared across her skin.

To the silence, his voice would never again be broken.

Her aura dissipated slowly, reluctantly. Her arms tightened around Mankhaura’s body.

"I will not forget this," she said bitterly, quietly.

"And neither will I," Thutmose replied, voice low. "For none of this... went how it was meant to."

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.